A top union official has hit out at a wide-ranging Productivity Commission review that will see the pay, conditions and penalty rates of every working Australian examined, saying that it's the beginning of a WorkChoices-style industrial relations push by the Abbott government.

But the Minister for Employment, Senator Eric Abetz, has dismissed the notion that Australians have anything to fear from the workplace relations review, the framework for which was accidentally published online by the Productivity Commission yesterday.

David O'Byrne, the national secretary of United Voice, accused the Government of using the commission to advance its own agenda.

"The Liberal party are using the Productivity commission as a stalking horse for their favourite ideological issues,'' he told ninemsn.

"They don't have the ticker to take on this issue on their own because they've learned that people reject it when they're aware of the full agenda and consequences."

In a statement, Senator Abetz said that the commission was undertaking a "once in a generation review of the workplace relations system" that would include all stakeholders.

Senator Abetz said that those against the review were motivated by a lack of evidence to support their viewpoints.

"The only people who have anything to fear from this inquiry are those who know deep in their hearts that they don't have robust evidence to put before the commission," he told Fairfax media.

He also said that the Government would not be implementing any of its recommendations during its current term.

"This is a review that we are not committed to accepting and if we do accept them [recommendations], they will be in our policies in the 2016 election."

ACTU president Ged Kearney there is no doubt the Abbott Government initiated the inquiry as a tool to pursue its obsession with workplace relations and issues like penalty rates and individual contracts.

"The Government wants this process to take workers backwards but we are determined to push for improvements."

"The Abbott Government has four bills before the Parliament that aim to strip away rights and conditions for Australian workers," said Ms Kearney.

"It’s ludicrous for the Abbott government to be wasting the time and resources of the Senate trying to pass four workplace relations bills before the Productivity Commission has even really started, let alone finished, its inquiry," she said.

The workplace relations framework was published accidentally on the commission's website yesterday, freely available to the public even thought it was marked for internal use only until today.

Labor politicians posted the link on Twitter, calling it the "blueprint for WorkChoices".

Mr O'Byrne said the planned release of the framework on the Friday before a long weekend was a deliberate ploy that had now backfired.

"It was cynically planned for release before the Australia Day long weekend in the hope that no-one would notice.

"What seems to be the hallmark of this government is their incompetence, and their ability to make the simple seem complex. They can't even execute a cynical political ploy right. This is the barnacle that's going to rip a hole in their ship."

A spokesperson for the Productivity Commission told ninemsn that the decision to publish today was not related to the prospect of publicity.

"The release date was entirely determined by the fact that the report is due in November. We needed to get it out as quickly as possible to allow parties to make their submissions before this date,” the spokesperson said.

In the review documents, the commission recognised that there is a shortage of shared ground on industrial relations, and said it would take into account the social and human costs of reform, as well as their effect on the economy.